Tess Gerritsen: Bloodstream

Lucy snapped on gloves. “Okay, let’s ease it out.”

He slid the tip of his trowel deeper into the bank and gingerly pried away caked mud. The object dropped into Lucy’s gloved hands. She scrambled out of the water and up onto the bank. Kneeling down, she surveyed her treasure over the tarp.

It was indeed a second skull. Under the floodlight, Lucy carefully turned it over and examined the teeth.

“Another juvenile. No wisdom teeth,” Lucy noted. “I see decayed molars here and here, but no fillings.”

“Meaning no dental work,” said Claire.

“Yes, these are old bones. A good thing for you, Lincoln. Otherwise, this would be an active homicide case.”

“Why do you say that?”

She rotated the skull, and the light fell on the crown, where fracture lines radiated out from a central depression, the way a soft-boiled egg cracks when it is struck with the back of a spoon.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt,” she said. “This child died a violent death.”

The chirp of a beeper cut through the silence, startling them all. In the stillness of those woods, that electronic sound was strangely foreign.

Disconcerting. Both Claire and Lincoln automatically reached for their respective pagers.

“It’s mine,” said Lincoln, glancing at his readout. Without another word, he took off through the woods toward his cruiser. Seconds later, Claire saw the dome light flashing through the trees as his vehicle streaked away.

“Must be an emergency,” said Lucy.

Officer Pete Sparks was already at the scene, trying to talk old Vein Fuller into putting down his shotgun. Night had fallen, and Lincoln’s first glimpse of the situation was of two wildly gesturing silhouettes intermittently backlit by the flashing dome light of Pete’s cruiser. Lin coin pulled to a stop in Vern’s driveway and cautiously stepped out of his vehicle. He heard bleating sheep, the restless clucking of chickens. The sounds of a working farm.

“You don’t need the gun,” Pete was saying. “Just go back in the house, Vern, and we’ll look into this.”

“Like you looked into it the last time?”

“I didn’t find anything the last time.”

“That’s because you take so damn long gettin’ here!”

“What’s the problem?” said Lincoln.

Vern turned to him. “That you, Chief Kelly? Then you tell this-this boy here that I’m not about to hand over my only protection.”

“I’m not asking you to hand it over,” said a weary-sounding Pete. “I just want you to stop waving it around. Go inside and put the gun away, so nobody gets hurt.”

“I think that’s a good idea;’ said Lincoln. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with, so you go in and lock the door, Vern. Stay close to the phone, just in case we need you to call for backup.”

“Backup?” Vern gave a grunt. “Yeah. Okay, I’ll do that.”

The two cops waited for the old man to stomp into the house and shut the door.

Then Pete said, “He’s blind as a bat. Wish we could get that shotgun away from him. Every time I come out here, I half expect to get my head blown off.”

“What’s the problem, anyway?”

“Aw, it’s the third time he’s called nine-one-one. I’m so busy runnin’ my tail off with all these other calls, it takes me a while to get here. He always has the same complaint about some wild animal stalking his sheep. Probably just seeing his own shadow, that’s what.”

“Why does he call us?”

“Cause Fish and Game takes even longer to respond. I been here twice this week, didn’t find anything. Not even a coyote print. Today’s the first time I seen Vern this riled up. Thought I’d better get you out, just in case he decided to shoot me ‘stead of some wild animal.”

Lincoln glanced at the house, and saw the old man’s face silhouetted in the window. “He’s watching. Might as well check the property, just to keep him happy”

“Says he saw the animal over by the barn.”

Pete turned on his flashlight, and they started across the yard, toward the sound of bleating sheep. Lincoln felt the old man’s gaze every step of the way.

Let’s just humor him, he thought. Even if it is a waste of our time.

He was startled when Pete suddenly halted, his flashlight beam trained on the barn door.

It hung open.

Something wasn’t right. It was after dark, and the door should have been latched to protect the animals.

He turned on his flashlight as well. They approached more slowly now, their jerky beams guiding the way. At the entrance to the barn they paused. Even through the earthy melange of farmyard odors, they could smell it: the scent of blood.

They stepped into the barn. At once the bleating intensified, the sound as disturbing as the cries of panicked children. Pete swung his flashlight in a wide arc, and they caught glimpses of pitchforks and fluttering chickens and sheep fearfully bunched together in a pen.

Lying on the sawdust floor was the source of that foul odor. Pete stumbled out of the building first, and retched into the weeds, one hand propped up against the barn wall. “Jesus. Jesus.”

“It’s just a dead sheep,” said Lincoln.

“I never seen a coyote do that. Lay out the offal.

Lincoln aimed his beam at the ground, quickly scanning the area around the barn door. All he saw was a jumble of boot prints, his and Pete’s and Vern Fuller’s.

No tracks. How could an animal leave no tracks?

A twig snapped behind him, and he whirled around to see Vern, still clutching the shotgun.

“It’s a bear,” said the old man. “That’s what I seen, a bear.”

“A bear wouldn’t do this.”

“I know what I saw. Whyn’t you believe me?”

Because everyone knows you’re half blind.

“It went that way, into the woods,” said Vern, pointing to the forested edge of his property “I followed it over there, just before dark. Then I lost it.”

Lincoln saw that the boot tracks did indeed head toward the forest, but Vern had retraced his steps several times, obscuring any animal footprints.

He followed the trail over to the woods. There he stood for a moment, peering into the blackness. The trees were so thick they seemed to form an impenetrable wall that even his flashlight beam could not pierce.

By now Pete had recovered, and was standing by his side. “We should wait till daylight,” Pete whispered. “Don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

“I know it’s not a bear.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not scared of bears. But if it’s something else.

Pete drew his weapon. “Rumor has it a cougar was spotted up at Jordan Falls last week.”

Now Lincoln drew his weapon as well as he moved slowly into the woods. He took half a dozen steps, the crack of breaking twigs under his boot as loud as gunfire. All at once he froze, staring at that wall of trees. The forest seemed to close in. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing up.

There’s something out there. It’s watching us.

Every instinct screamed at him to retreat. He backed away, his heart racing, his boots setting off explosions of noise. Only when he and Pete had emerged completely from the woods did that feeling of imminent danger fade away.

They stood once again in front of Vern Fuller’s barn, and the sheep were still bleating. He looked down at the boot prints. Suddenly his head came up.

“What lies beyond those woods?” he asked.

“Goes back a ways,” said Vern. “Other side’s Barnstown Road. Bunch of houses.”

Houses, thought Lincoln.

Families.

Noah was watching TV when Claire got home. As she hung up her coat in the hallway, she recognized the theme music from The Simpsons cartoon playing in the other room, and she heard Homer Simpson’s loud burp and Lisa Simpson’s mutter of disgust. Then she heard her son laugh, and she thought: I’m so glad my son still laughs at cartoons.